


Filthy Animals

by luminate



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Canon-Typical Behavior, Christmas, F/M, Frottage, Hurt/Comfort, Suicidal Ideation, side macdennis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:34:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28388604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luminate/pseuds/luminate
Summary: Dee has a blue, blue Christmas. Charlie tries to help.
Relationships: Charlie Kelly/Dee Reynolds
Comments: 14
Kudos: 30





	Filthy Animals

**Author's Note:**

> Because Dee in “The Gang Broke Dee” really spoke to me. Takes place vaguely after season 11. There are references to suicidal behavior throughout but nothing graphic.

It’s maybe 4 a.m. in the beautiful city of Philadelphia and Charlie is on the hunt for an extension cord. He bought a string of pretty multicolored lights a while back to throw up in front of Paddy’s for Christmas, but just this morning he jolted awake with the realization that there’s no electrical outlet on the outside of the building. He’ll have to snake a cord through the door or a gap in the roof from the inside. It’ll work. It should. It has to—it’s already the Eve Of, and the bar has nothing to show for it. That's the norm, to be fair, but this year, Charlie's fully committed to the task of decorating. It’s taken some time, but he’s starting to like the holiday again. The cheer. The eggnog. The sweaters. Especially the lights, which is why he needs to find an extension cord.

Charlie’s barely made it five minutes out of his apartment building when he sees her on the bridge.

“Dee!”

She doesn’t seem to have noticed him. She hasn’t turned around, still leaning over the rail, chin turned down. Maybe he wasn’t loud enough? He yells again.

“Dee! Deandra!”

Okay, he’s fifty or so feet away from her, so he’s sure she can hear him even if she can’t identify him. It is dark, to be fair. He can only tell it’s her because she’s so goddamn tall and skinny, and she’s got on the same sweatsuit she’s been wearing for the past week. He waves like a maniac.

“Hey, Dee! Merry Christmas!”

She keeps looking at the water. When he gets closer, he realizes she’s got her feet stuck in the rail, hovering precariously over the edge.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Dee’s head jerks toward Charlie, and she falls backward a little, stumbling onto the sidewalk. She’s holding an empty beer bottle.

Charlie draws closer. She looks like shit, hair sticking up in the back, her eyes smudged black.

“Are you…?”

“Oh, goddamn it,” she says weakly.

“Please don’t tell the guys about this,” is the second thing Dee says to him that morning. He sort of had to drag her back to her apartment, tugging at her forearm. It’s a lot further than his own place, and she doesn’t ask him to take her, but he’d feel like an asshole if he forced her to sleep in a bed with Frank. Charlie personally enjoys the company, but he knows that If Dee woke up to Frank’s breath in her face, she might come right back to the bridge and actually jump this time.

Anyway, she says it while she’s fiddling with her key in the lock. It’s taking forever. Charlie gently pries it from her hand and unlocks the door himself.

“Did you hear me, dickhead?” Dee grumbles as he pushes her toward her unmade bed. She slumps over onto her back, feet dangling off the edge of the mattress.

“Yeah, I heard.” He’s not sure if he should take off her sneakers or not. They’re already untied and just sort of hanging there.

“You’re not gonna tell them, then?”

“What, that you tried to jump off a goddamn bridge?! Dee, I’m gonna tell them. That’s insane.”

“Please, Charlie.”

“Are you on drugs? Crack? Is it crack again? You can tell me. I won’t judge. It’s just, if you’re on crack—”

“No,” Dee says, voice suddenly sharp.

“Oh.”

“I had one beer,” she says, and now her voice is high, and she’s almost laughing. That, or she’s about to start crying, and Charlie doesn’t know which would make him more uncomfortable.

“Sorry,” he says, studying his feet. “I thought…”

“Yeah, I know. I’ve sunk to new, impossible lows.”

“You just need, like, help.”

“Oh, I know. I need a lot of help. But right now, I just wanna go to sleep.”

“Sure, okay.”

Staring at the ceiling, she murmurs, “So you won’t tell the guys?”

“…I feel like I really should, all things considered.”

She makes a sort of growling sound and flops over on her stomach, face buried in her comforter. She looks smaller somehow. “Fuck off,” she seems to say, though it’s muffled.

“They’re not gonna make fun of you, if that’s what you’re thinking. Or, like, if they do, it’s just how they express concern, you know? That stuff doesn’t mean anything.”

She doesn’t respond. Her eyes are open, but she doesn’t seem to be looking at anything in particular. He wonders if he should pat her back or something. Instead he goes for the shoes. _Plunk, plunk._ She’s not wearing any socks.

“Too depressed for socks, huh?”

No reply.

“Kidding,” Charlie says, a little nervous. Her arms are splayed at awkward angles, but it doesn’t seem to bother her. It must, though. She’s probably just tired. He straightens out her arms for her, grabs her ankles and swings them onto the bed, and she moves with little resistance, letting herself be manipulated like a ragdoll. Once she looks to be in a semi-comfortable position, Charlie backs away, his breathing slightly labored.

“Well, then…” he trails off. He doesn’t want to leave her. He really, really doesn’t want to leave her. The extension cord stuff seems stupid now, like it was a million years ago. He wonders if there’s a way you can lock an apartment door from the outside. But then she might just jump out the window, right? Do her windows open? What floor does she live on, again?

“Charlie,” she says, irritated.

“Hmm?”

“You’re just, like, standing over me and breathing really loud. It’s creepy.”

His hand goes up to his neck. “Whoops. Sorry,” he says with an uneasy laugh. “I was wondering, though. Can I maybe just… sleep on the couch?”

She’s still staring ahead, eyes half-shut, and he’s not even sure if she heard him. Maybe she’s ignoring him, just praying he’ll go away.

“Or I can just go home, that’s cool,” he says, reaching to pat her on the arm. But then her hand is around his wrist.

“Or I can stay?” he tries.

Dee, still looking ahead, nods a little. She pulls him toward her. This is weird, Charlie thinks, but what the hell, she tried to jump off a bridge today, who knows what she’s thinking. And it’s Christmas Eve, so. She’s probably lonely. Any warm body would do. But Charlie’s here, and he runs pretty warm, so he kicks off his Vans and crawls onto the bed next to her.

It’s really hard to fall asleep. Mostly because he was up and ready to walk three miles a mere hour ago, and also because he can’t tell if Dee’s still awake and it’s driving him insane. He’s lying flat on his back, Dee’s on her front with her head turned away, and there’s about a foot of space between them. And she’s not moving, like she’s not even breathing.

Maybe she was lying about not being on crack. If she’s lying, there’s probably a pipe or like whatever her preferred crack paraphernalia is somewhere in the apartment. Charlie doesn’t think she would lie—he wouldn’t judge her, after all, and she knows that, right?—but it wouldn’t hurt to check. And he might find something else, some sort of clue that would explain why she’s acting this way. And, oh God, he thinks, there must be a note. Or would she have left without a note? The thought makes his head light for a second.

He realizes his right leg, the one next to Dee, is jittering all over like an electrified worm, and tries to pin it down with his hand.

He's not sure why he’s so shaken by this. Didn’t they see it coming? Dennis had been cracking jokes about it all month, poking at Dee’s sweatsuit uniform and the growing hunch in her shoulders. Really funny stuff in the beginning, because he had a ridiculous stockpile of shit to compare her to—Frankenstein, Gary Busey, Harvey Dent but with two fucked-up sides, Mrs. Mac (though Mac didn’t like that one), whatever bum was loitering in the alley that day, the _Total Recall_ mutant baby, a walking cigarette. And the rest of them would laugh and someone would call her a bird, and then Mac would take it too far as usual, telling her she’ll die alone or something. And she wouldn’t even fight back; she just kept puffing away at her Marlboros. Skin pale, eyelids heavy. Eventually it stopped being fun to joke about. She wouldn’t call them stupid cocksuckers or tell them to fuck off or even flinch.

Charlie looks over at her again. He thinks he can see her back rise and fall. So she’s alive. Good. That’s good.

It isn’t like he’s never seen her sad. He’s seen her _really_ sad, seen her cry, seen her flip out and not come to work for a week, but this is different. This is Zombie Dee, and this Dee has only come out twice (now thrice) in the decades he’s known her.

The first time she was like this was when she dropped out of Penn (or got kicked out; she wasn’t really clear about that). Back in the days when she was just Dennis’s twin sister. She was a walking corpse for a good year, and then one day she was better. He didn’t think too much about it—maybe that’s what college does to people, he wouldn’t know—and then they opened up the bar and she was the same foul-mouthed, tough-as-nails Dee he’d known in high school. A month in, though, while he and Dennis were putting up the new Paddy’s sign, Dennis mentioned casually that his sister had tried to kill herself last night and got herself hospitalized. “Jesus Christ,” Charlie had replied, and then they moved on, because that was what they did. What was he gonna do, write her a note? The gang never understands his notes anyway, so he doubted it would help. He wanted to help, though. He just didn’t know how.

The second appearance of Zombie Dee was a couple years back. For reasons he can’t really explain, this second time was a lot scarier but also less surprising. He and Frank and Mac pulled off this week-long standup scheme—very involved stuff, hard to explain. The important thing is that it worked. By the end she was normal Dee—granted, with a few qualities amplified, like spite and vulgarity, but anything was better than pokerfaced, eyes-glazed-over, chain-smoking Dee. She reduced her smoke breaks to a few times a week after that, a pace Charlie could keep up with.

That was until Zombie Dee returned this year in full force at the start of December. Charlie should have seen it coming when she stopped asking him if he wanted a smoke every time she went for one herself, blowing through a pack a day without any help. Her breath went to shit.

Light is beginning to peek through Dee’s bare windows. Charlie has resigned himself to staring at the ceiling for a few more hours when Dee flops over, grumbling.

“Charlie,” she says, though her eyes are shut. “I can’t fucking sleep.”

“You’ve been awake this whole time?!” he whisper-yells.

She opens her eyes and turns her head to face him. “Yeah. I’ve just been sort of stewing in my self-hatred, so.”

“Jesus, Dee,” he sighs, voice up high. “I’ve been up for hours.”

“Oh. Why didn’t you leave?” She says this so nonchalantly, Charlie wants to grab her by the shoulders and shake her hard.

“Why would I leave?!”

“I don’t know.”

The conversation dies, but they’re both still awake. Charlie wants to say something but doesn’t know how to put it into words.

After a prolonged silence, Dee says faintly, “I keep thinking about what I would’ve done if you hadn’t found me.”

“Me too,” Charlie blurts.

“I probably would have done it.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

He looks at Dee and feels very cold all of a sudden. She’s staring at the ceiling, face unreadable.

“That sucks, Dee. That’s awful.”

“No kidding.”

“I don’t want to think about it anymore.”

“Me neither.” They’re quiet again, and then Dee adds, “Thanks, though. It was deeply humiliating for me, but… I’m glad you were there.”

“Yeah, Dee, I’m really fucking glad I was there, too.”

“I mean… I’m glad it was _you_.”

“Oh.” He gets what she means, but he still wants to ask why.

Before he can say anything at all, though, Dee says this: “You’re my best friend, you know that?”

“Am I actually?” He _does_ know it, now that he thinks about it. Dee doesn’t have very many friends. But it’s still weird to hear.

“God, don’t make me sound so pathetic.”

“I’m not—"

“I hate those guys. I really do.” She sighs. She doesn’t have to say who.

“They don’t hate you, though.”

“Well, yeah, they wouldn’t spare the energy to hate me. You’ve got a point.” Her face is still, not giving anything away except exhaustion.

“Come on. Mac, maybe, but Dennis? Your own brother?”

“Charlie... I appreciate the effort, but you’re not helping. Like, at all.”

She rolls over, face hidden from Charlie. It’s impossible to read her now. “Sorry,” he murmurs. He stares at her back for a while, the swath of bare neck not hidden behind her ratty head of hair, and his heart aches a little.

“Fuck those guys, Dee,” he says.

“Ha.”

“Fuck ‘em.”

She turns back over. They’re both lying flat on top of the comforter, arms at their sides and gazes turned on the off-white ceiling, still separated by a foot or so of space. “Thanks, Charlie.” Her voice is small, but she sounds relieved.

Charlie lets out a meandering exhale. “And, you know, you’re obviously my best friend, too.”

She snorts. “I don’t buy that. Above Mac? Frank? Even Dennis?”

“They’re also my best friends,” he says matter-of-factly.

“You do know what ‘best’ means, right?”

“Course I do.”

“Charlie,” Dee says, “when you lie to protect my feelings, it makes me feel stupid.”

His voice climbs an octave. “What? I didn’t lie.”

“Come on. I’m number four, easily.” Her voice, in turn, has gained a few decibels, shedding the lethargic whisper she’s been using for the past few hours. “Or maybe three—I can see myself having an edge over Dennis. That’s believable, at least.”

“Jeeesus Christ, Dee, why do you have to bring numbers into it?”

“I’m just saying!” She gets quieter. “You’re my number one, and I’m not yours.”

Now Charlie’s gone quiet. His leg starts squirming again. He’s afraid to look at her.

“Sorry. That was really dramatic. It’s not a big deal, I’m just, like, pointing out a salient example of how much my life sucks.” She pauses. “Not that it’s your fault that I, uh… you know. Whatever. Forget it.”

After an unintendedly long silence, he says, “You’re not like them, though.”

“Okay,” Dee says, sort of scoffing and sort of like a question.

“You’re not number four, number three, number anything. You’re, like… Dee.”

She turns to Charlie with a little grin. “Number Dee?”

“Yeah, exactly,” he says eagerly, and now he can look at her. And she’s smiling, and it’s great. He sighs. “Number Dee.”

“Sounds like three.”

“Oh, fuck off, will you?” He gives her a light whack on the arm. “You’re number one in the category of Charlie’s Dee. You’re the only one, and you’re the damn best one, so… shut up.”

“Not a lot of competition.”

“Yeah, well, no one else stands a chance.”

Dee doesn’t say anything for a while.

“That’s… really sweet.”

Charlie’s face is hot. “Yeah, cause I meant it.”

Before he can think better of it, his hand traverses the foot of space that separates them, fingers sliding into place between hers. And maybe because she’s tired, maybe because this morning’s been so fucked up, she doesn’t question it. Doesn’t call him creepy, doesn’t tell him to fuck off. Just lets it happen.

And it’s nice.

Charlie’s Dee.

Dee wakes up on her bed. Not in, but on, still in yesterday’s sweatpants, but at least she isn’t wearing shoes. Then she remembers: _Nope, that wasn’t me, that was Charlie_. Charlie took off her shoes. She can’t even take her shoes off by herself. _Note to self: look into Velcro._

Charlie is wrapped around the length of her arm like a scruffy little koala to a tree branch. His chest rises and falls against her shoulder, freckled arms encircling her elbow, while his knees have edged upward, trapping her hand in a vice-like denim grip. It’s almost adorable, but she’s also gripped by an urge to scream in his face because Charlie will certainly do the same to her the second he opens his eyes.

But Dee does not scream. It would require a sudden burst of energy on her part, energy that would be impossible to summon. If she hadn’t been almost a hundred percent prepared to die this morning, this situation might have shocked her, but she’s probably not capable of feeling that emotion anymore. The main emotion circulating through her at the moment is something like confusion, or maybe affection, a general queasy warmness. Her thoughts have all been replaced by isolated words and flashes of color. Charlie. Bridge. Freckles. Water. Black. Dark. Green. Blue-green.

Then there were the lights; the Christmas lights had been so pretty, the reds and the greens. Yellow, blue, whatever. All the other colors. So pretty it made her want to jump into the Schuylkill River.

Stark white light from the afternoon sun invades the room. She needs to buy blinds for that window. Now, though, she decides to close her eyes and go limp. She’ll get the freaking-out part over with once Charlie wakes up. Or, compelled by regret, he might slip out silently, and Dee will pretend to be asleep so as to preserve both of their feelings. Either way, a win-win.

As Charlie snores lightly next to her, images of the early morning darkness come trickling back. Charlie walking toward her and waving furiously, a giant smile on his face, wool hat pulled over his ears, and the way his hand stopped moving midair at the same time his face fell. The whole thing was unbearable. Not that she’s never made an ass out of herself in front of him before, but this… this humiliation was furiously adolescent, in the ballpark of being caught masturbating or having your diary read aloud to you. Like, oh, it says here you think you’re a pathetic unmarried-at-40 loser who has nothing left to live for? Fascinating!

Though without her consent, now that her soul has been laid bare there’s probably very little she could do to lower herself in Charlie’s eyes. The thought almost comforts her.

But here’s something fucked up that Charlie doesn’t have to know: In that tiny second when his hand had frozen and his face changed, Dee was planning to jump anyway. The idea was short-lived, but it was there. For a moment she was willing to permanently traumatize the guy just to not have to deal with his reaction. As if Charlie doesn’t have three lifetimes worth of trauma to unpack already.

She allows herself a look at his sleeping face, blank and serene, strands of his rumpled hair stuck to his forehead and curling over his ears. And then she gets this impulse to brush them to the side—why does that happen? And how the corner of his parted mouth is a little wet from drool, and she doesn’t think it’s gross, doesn’t even mind at all, she just thinks it’s cute and wants to wipe it away—what’s that about? Simple questions with simple answers, but she would rather not deal with those feelings right now. So she closes her eyes again.

Charlie begins to stir soon enough, squeezing her arm even tighter before he splays his limbs out with a groan.

“Morning, Dee.”

She decides at that moment to skip the whole fake waking up thing. Instead she turns to meet his gaze and gives him a brief closed-mouth smile. He’s already sitting up and watching her, eyes wide. “Morning,” she says, monotone.

His shoulders relax when she gives her response. “I kinda thought you’d take off while I was sleeping.”

“Same. I woke up a while ago and was gonna pretend to be asleep if you tried to leave.”

He narrows his eyes. “I feel like if anyone was gonna make a run for it, if was definitely you.” Then he grins. “But here we are.”

They stare at each other for a while, ghosts of smiles on their faces.

“I had a bad dream,” Charlie says.

“Me too.”

They both look away. Dee notices her dirtied shoes sitting on the floor by her side of the bed.

“Do we have to talk about… things?” she asks, voice quivering a little.

“Nah.”

Jesus, is she about to cry right now? She keeps her head turned away from Charlie, blinking fast and swiping away the tears as they form, though a few escape and leave wet spots on her pillow. With a quick sniff she turns back to him. “Thanks.”

He doesn’t say anything but tilts his head as he watches her, brow furrowed, expression unusually thoughtful. Then he leans down and gives her a peck on the cheek, mouth brushing a still-damp spot just below her left eye, and draws away slow.

“What are you doing?” she asks, trying to sound incredulous, but there’s no bite to it. Her voice is still shaky.

“I don’t know.” The thoughtful expression has vanished, replaced by a vacant stare into the space behind her. “We can just pretend it didn’t happen.”

She sits up, rubbing at her eyes. “Okay.”

“Wanna see a movie?”

She shrugs. “Sure.”

She and Charlie agree to meet up later that night. Mac called him asking about the lights, complaining that the bar wasn’t nearly festive enough, and if there’s anywhere Dee wants to be less than Paddy’s, it’s a festively decorated Paddy’s. So while Charlie’s busy with Charlie work, Dee is alone in bed, lying in the same position he’d left her in.

As soon as he hung up on Mac, Charlie had said to her, “I honestly feel like if I leave right now, you’re gonna immediately kill yourself.” Dee laughed at this, but his expression was dead serious.

“I won’t,” she replied. “We have plans.”

That was enough to get Charlie to leave. He kept glancing at her on his way out, though, like she would shatter if he looked away for too long, and it was driving her insane. It was sweet, but still. She isn’t used to it. She let out a prolonged exhale as he shut the door behind him.

Twenty minutes of lying around later, she can’t stop thinking about how he had leaned down and kissed her like it was nothing. She still feels the heat of his lips lingering on her cheek. The random tenderness of it had thrown her for a loop.

It’s not as though they’ve never kissed before. Who could say how many times they’ve gotten blackout drunk and made out in the back office of Paddy’s? That didn’t mean anything; she’s pretty sure she even made out with Mac once, for example. One awesome thing about the Gang is that they never hold anyone responsible for what happens during blackouts. If someone remembered the stupid thing you did, chances are that person was also doing something stupid. And even if they weren’t doing something stupid at that time, they would almost certainly do something stupid in the future. At the end of the day, the threat of mutually assured destruction keeps all parties agreeable.

And then there was the almost-sober kiss, the one that led to banging. A blip in the timeline. They acknowledged it out loud once, and it was directly afterward, when Dee ruined the moment by saying what didn’t really need to be said— _Obviously no one can find out about this_. And Charlie nodded, because yeah, it was obvious. And they both got quiet. And for a while things were weird as they course-corrected; then it was normal again. Almost normal. Charlie is strangely nice to her sometimes, and other times he can be uncharacteristically cruel, though she has realized that she’s more invested in his behavior than she ever was before, and more sensitive to it. It’s likely all in her head. They haven’t banged since.

So Dee, while well-acquainted with Charlie Kelly’s lips and hands and most other parts, still feels his chaste good-morning kiss on her cheek like a third-degree burn.

He’s gonna ruin everything, she realizes. The way of things. The way is this: Dee is Dee, Charlie is Charlie, the Gang is the Gang. Even if they’re lonely forever, they have each other. They’ve always had each other. If that gets fucked up, what then? What else is there? Dee doesn’t want to think about that. She doesn’t want to think at all, actually. Not right now, when she’s not even sold on being alive in general.

She forces herself out of bed, waddles over to her fridge, and throws back a few beers. Merry goddamn Christmas.

The second Charlie walks into Paddy’s, Mac ambushes him like he’s been standing at the door waiting for him. Or, possibly doing his job. “Dude, where the hell have you been? The holiday spirit around here is lacking severely.”

Charlie shrugs.

“Ignore him,” Dennis says as he approaches the bar. “I don’t know why he gets like this every year. It’s gonna drive me over the edge.”

“What’s with all the people?” Charlie mutters, dropping onto a seat.

“The day-drinkers are showing up in full force. ‘Tis the season.” He’s actually serving people drinks, Charlie notices, as he slides a pair of shots toward a slumped customer down the bar.

“Oh, we’re working today? I didn’t realize.”

“You didn't—? God. I don’t have time for this. Go do whatever it is that you do.”

“Yup. Got the lights right here.” Charlie holds up the roll of LED’s triumphantly.

“Sure, you do that. Mac,” Dennis says, waving him over, “since Dee’s a massive fuck-up you’ll have to man the bar with me.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Mac says as he moves speedily to Dennis’s right side.

“And make sure people actually pay for their drinks. For some reason you’re always forgetting that step.”

Mac frowns.

Meanwhile, Charlie polishes off a beer. He pushes himself up, the extension cord situation fully occupying his mind, when Dennis muses, “Where is Dee, by the way?”

“She’s had that Scrooge thing going on for a while now,” Mac says. “It’s getting really annoying.”

“Charlie?”

He clutches the roll of lights to his chest. “What? Why would I know?”

“I don’t know,” Dennis says, throwing his hands up. “Why would anyone know?”

“Well, I don’t.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m aware.” Dennis closes his eyes. “You know, it’s a goddamn miracle this place is still open. Idiots.” A customer has been trying to get his attention at the other end of the bar for the past minute, so he stomps over, muttering unintelligibly.

As Charlie attempts to leave, Mac reaches across the bar and grabs his arm. “I can’t get a read on Dennis today.”

Charlie shrugs. “Seems like he’s just running hot, right? The holidays are weird for him.”

“Are the holidays not weird for any of us?”

“Good point.”

“I just feel like he’s pissed at me.”

“Dude, I don’t know. I need to get these lights up,” Charlie says, holding up the LEDs.

“I think I might be the new Dee,” Mac blurts. He looks genuinely worried.

“Huh?”

“You know how ever since Dee checked out, it’s way less fun to mock her?”

“Yeah, man. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that, actually. You gotta ease up.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying…” Charlie’s voice gets high. “I don’t know, just ease up.”

“Whatever, bro.” Mac goes back to toweling off glasses. “She’s not even around enough for me to mock her. God, you’re so weird about her lately.”

Charlie opens his mouth to refute this but isn’t sure how. He _is_ weird about her. Fortunately, Mac moves on.

“But as I was saying. Dennis has all this pent-up rage now, and it has nowhere to go besides me. And it’s like, sure, okay. I’ll take the heat. I understand.” Mac is scrubbing furiously at the glass in his hand. “But last night he walked into my room, and I was naked, you know, changing? And he said my dick looked like a squirrel dick. And since then he’s been calling me ‘squirrel dick.’ Like, what does that even mean? Is that who am I now? And how does he even know what that looks like? So, yeah. I think I’m the new Dee.”

Charlie squints. “I’m about to mock you, dude, but it has nothing to do with Dee.”

“I’m baring my soul to you and you’re gonna mock me?”

“Yeah, dude. How am I weird about Dee when you’re like _that_ with Dennis?”

Mac scowls, but the conversation quickly ends as Dennis walks over with his own look of irritation, eyebrows drawn and mouth pouted. “I just want to reiterate how much I fucking hate Christmas.”

“Oh, we know,” Charlie says.

“You just gotta try to replace the shit memories with good ones. That’s what me and Charlie have done.”

Dennis shoots Mac a glare. “Yeah?”

“It’s just a suggestion.”

“Well, I don’t wanna do shit tonight,” Dennis says, slouching over the bar. “Can we just get plastered in the back office or something?”

Charlie sucks his teeth. “I don’t know, man.”

Dennis frowns. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“I’m, like, busy.”

Mac narrows his eyes. “With what?”

“Plans!”

“Right, plans,” Dennis says. “Must be the other friend group you co-own a bar with.”

“Frank!” Charlie blurts. “Frank wants me to, uh, shave his back.”

Both his friends grimace at this.

“It’s my Christmas present to him, so. You know. Gotta do it.”

Dennis thinks on this and relents with a nod. “His back _is_ hairy.”

“Plus, Dennis, you and me can still get drunk in our apartment,” Mac says.

“We do that every night.” He pauses. “But yeah. Sure.”

“Good stuff, guys,” Charlie says, mind back on the LED string lights and how pretty they’re gonna look up on the Paddy’s sign. “I have to go see about an extension cord now.”

Before he can get away, though, Dennis tugs on his jacket sleeve. “We’re still on for the throwing-rocks-at-trains thing, right?”

“Obviously,” Charlie scoffs, walking off for real this time.

At last, the Paddy’s sign twinkles with multicolored light, a rare spot of cheer on the gloomy block of brick buildings. He feels suddenly full, like his insides might burst apart, but full of what? He’s not sure. For a moment he wants to cry a little but gets over it quickly. Then he imagines Dee still lying in bed at her apartment, waiting for him.

Dee goddamn Reynolds. He’s known her more than half his life and still manages to have new feelings about her every day. Right now the feeling is a mix of fear and warmth, like when you get stuck in a sweater cause you can’t find the head-hole, but it smells good in there so you don’t really mind.

Dee is slightly drunk when he gets there, but at least she’s out of bed. So that’s good.

“Charlie,” she drawls from the kitchen table. Her head is slumped next to a few opened cans of beer. “I’m so fucking bored. Is it Christmas yet?”

“Not for a little while.” He sits across from her and picks up each can until he finds one that has a little liquid still sloshing around inside, which he promptly downs. “You get any suicidal urges while I was gone?”

“Eh, not really. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Whew! Okay. That’s great.” He goes in for a high-five.

Dee returns it weakly. “I don’t think I earned that.”

“You’re alive, aren’t you?”

She gives him a smile. “Seems so.”

“So, Dee.” Charlie stretches himself out in his chair. “How do you feel about bears?”

“In general, or?”

“In movies.”

“They’re cool, I guess.” Dee perks up a little, as if she only just remembered their plans. “So, what’s showing?”

“Paddington 2 in fifteen minutes, if we walk really fast.”

“Sounds dumb. Let’s do it.”

Hugh Grant is chasing a small bear across the roof of a moving train. Dee blinks rapidly. She’s collapsed against Charlie, cheek squashed on his shoulder, the armrest between them digging into her ribs. It’s all very uncomfortable, but Charlie doesn’t seem to notice or mind. He’s shoveling popcorn into his mouth with his free hand and beaming at the bright screen. Then the stylish little cartoon bear nearly falls off the caboose, and he yelps, face twisting with concern. Dee doesn’t move until the movie draws to a close a good fifteen minutes later, too afraid to remind him that she’s there.

“That was so good!” he exclaims when the lights come on. The few others in the theater have already filed out. He looks down at her, and Dee realizes it’s too late to pretend she’s still sleeping.

“I liked the end,” she says, pushing herself up. “With the bear doing the stunts.” There’s a piece of popcorn in her hair, and Charlie reaches for it before she can get it herself and casually flicks it into the aisle.

“This is the kind of thing the other guys would hate. A bear wearing a little hat?”

“The hat is cute.”

“Right?!” Charlie gestures wildly at nothing. “You get me, Dee.”

There’s something about the way he says her name, with the middle part elongated and the end dropping low; he makes the letters sound new. Right then and there she decides something: She wants to bang Charlie. Fuck it, it’ll make her happy. That’s what’s happening here anyway, right? He’s trying to bang her, she’s trying to bang him. So let it happen.

They don’t talk much on the dimly lit walk back to Dee’s apartment. Charlie keeps brushing up against her, his shoulder grazing a few inches below her own, and she can’t tell if he’s aware of it, buried as he is under layers of clothing. He’s filled out his army jacket with a sweatshirt underneath and underneath that layer, his favorite holiday sweater, the blue one with the horse on the front. And on his head, a gray wool hat.

About five blocks away from her building, she says, “You’re kind of like a bear, Charlie.”

He pulls out his hands from his pockets and claws at the air. “Grrr.” He puts his hands back. “Yeah, I can see that.”

“Not that part. You’re not at all intimidating. Not a grizzly.”

He looks over at her, offended. “Not a grizzly?!”

“More like a black bear. You know, the cute ones,”—she permits herself a glance at his reaction, and his cheeks are tinged pink, but it’s probably just the cold—“foragers. They just hang out and look around for berries and shit. Like the one in the movie.”

“That bear was so clearly brown.”

Dee frowns. “Just take the goddamn compliment.”

“Get your facts straight first.”

“Whatever. I was asleep for 90% of it.”

“I know,” Charlie says, punctuated by a sputtered laugh. “You were sleeping _on_ me.”

“Well, I was tired. Dick,” she grumbles. Still walking ahead, she huffs, folds her arms and puts a foot of distance between them. He laughs again. Why does he keep laughing? She looks over and he’s beaming at her. She looks away. “The hell are you smiling for?”

“Sorry. You’re just, like, brighter.”

“Brighter.” She’s been wearing the same marinara-stained sweatshirt for the past week and can physically feel the earth’s gravity tugging on the skin below her eyes right now. “Now you’re just fucking with me.”

“Okay, not bright like a flower or rainbow or whatever, but like a grease fire.”

“Gee, thanks, Charlie.” This is meant to come out sarcastic, which isn’t successful because she’s putting in a little too much effort to fight off a smile.

“You’re welcome.”

Eyes still forward, she moves a bit closer to him. “So you’re a cute little bear and I’m a grease fire.”

“Have you ever smelled a grease fire? They smell super good, Dee.”

“I’m glad someone thinks so.”

They shuffle into the apartment a few minutes later and shed all their layers at once, Charlie launching his hat into the air and not bothering to watch where it lands, Dee kicking off her shoes on the way to the couch, where they both end up draped over an armrest on their respective sides. Both breathing hard. They’re sitting in dark for a while until Dee reaches for the lamp and flicks it on.

Then Charlie messes with the TV remote for a while, rapidly flipping through channels. She watches attentively at his reactions to each new image, the slight tug in his lips and the brief eyebrow raises. The cool glow of the television overpowers the lamplight, casting the left of him in faint shadow.

He lands on a holiday music channel. She didn’t even know her TV got that channel. “Jingle Bell Rock” is playing.

“We should make eggnog,” Charlie says, head lolling toward Dee as the thought comes to him.

“Ran out of eggs. I have a fuck-ton of rum, though.”

With that, Dee pushes herself off the couch and wanders into the kitchen. There should be a three-quarters-full bottle of Captain Morgan somewhere around here. As she rifles through the cabinets, she spares a look back at Charlie. Still flopped on the couch, now playing with a loose thread in the upholstery. Jesus, is she gonna bang him tonight? Usually once she sets a course she can stick to it no problem, but now she feels a little lightheaded at the thought. Rum will help. She finds it in the leftmost cabinet and takes a quick swig.

“Dee,” Charlie calls, still occupied with the thread, “Are we gonna eat dinner?”

“Huh?”

“Like, did you eat more than just popcorn today? Cause I could cook something up really quick.”

“Seriously?” she says as Charlie shuffles into the kitchen. “I have the randomest assortment of food ever. You’re gonna have to scrounge around.”

He rubs his hands together excitedly. “I can scrounge.”

She nudges his shoulder with the bottle, and he accepts it, downing a decent amount of liquor before he hands it back and gets to work, throwing a pan on the stove. In the meantime, Dee hops onto the counter, clutching the rum, and watches. Two minutes in, he’s managed to find about half the ingredients for a Grilled Charlie. Good enough for Dee.

“Jingle Bell Rock” comes to a close. “What the fuck is a jingle horse?” Dee scoffs.

Charlie stops in his tracks, spatula in hand. “Gosh. I don’t know. Is it just wearing bells?”

“But why is that its whole identity?” She takes a long swig of rum. “Christmas is fucked. I hate it so much.”

They fall silent as Wham!’s “Last Christmas” fades in. Charlie, bobbing his head to the music, motions for the bottle; they pass it back and forth for a while as the sandwiches begin to sizzle in their little puddles of grease.

“Does it make you sad?” he asks, gaze fixed on the pan.

“Hm?”

“Like, all the Christmas stuff. The movies and the songs. The lights.”

“Yeah. Doesn’t it for you?”

He tilts his head. “A little.”

His gaze has floated away from the sandwiches. He looks contemplative, a word Dee would rarely use to describe him, but maybe it’s because she’s never watched him so closely before.

“Why is that?” he asks, glancing over at her.

Dee sighs. “We’re lonely people, Charlie.”

“Is that it?”

“I don’t know.” Her body feels heavy all over, except her stomach; her stomach is light, like it might float away. The rum has turned everything fuzzy. He almost made her forget why he’s there. ”I don’t really want to think about it, to be honest.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” she says.

Charlie goes quiet on her, turning his focus back on the sandwiches, flipping both on the pan and patting them with the spatula. They don’t speak until he’s finished. He announces that they’re kind of burnt on the bottom, but in a good way. Dee wanders over to the couch, cradling the Captain Morgan like a newborn, and he follows with their paper plates.

Charlie sets the plates down on her coffee table and watches as Dee curls up on the right side of the couch, shivering a little. He disappears into her bedroom and returns with a knit blanket, which he wordlessly tosses at her. Then he crawls under it himself. So there they are. Knees touching but nothing else. She can’t get a read on him, not at all. He’s hunched forward, ravaging his Grilled Charlie. Dee takes a few nibbles out of hers and sets it down.

Elvis now croons from the TV. He wants Dee and Charlie to know he’ll be home for Christmas.

“Shit, that was good,” he says, dusting off his hands. Then his eyes sort of refocus, like he’s just remembered where he is. He shoots Dee a brief side-glance. He looks sweet, almost innocent, all bundled up in his sweater.

“Thanks for dinner. And the other stuff.”

“You don’t have to thank me,” he mumbles. He looks down at his hands, folded on the blanket over his lap.

“I did, though.” Dee doesn’t fight the smile creeping up her face; she knows better by now. “So accept my thanks.”

Charlie leans back. “Well, you know.”

“I know what?”

“You know, Merry Christmas or whatever,” he says, craning his neck to face her. It seems he miscalculates, because their noses end up mere inches apart, and his eyes widen like he’s surprised to see her.

“It’s not even 8 on Christmas Eve,” she says, and then he’s kissing her.

It’s brief. His lips are on hers for less than two seconds, but as he draws away his nose grazes hers, and Dee leans into it. She drags the tip of her nose along the length of his, and nestles into his cheek. They fit nicely.

“Dee,” he breathes, “Is this happening?”

“Clearly.”

He pulls away a little, eyes flicking back and forth as he tries to read her. Dee can’t recall the last time she had been looked at this closely, like a specimen. Like something to be analyzed and revered. Her stomach does several flips.

“But, do you want—"

“Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, I want it to.”

He stares at her for a few seconds more, like he’s not sure what to do, so she gives him a small smile. He responds by reaching for her under the blanket, his hand roaming up her arm, and tugs her toward him.

Their lips meet again, and Dee doesn’t press into Charlie very hard but he gives way easily, his breath quickening as she backs him up against the couch’s armrest. Her hand tangled in his hair, his hands hugging her waist. He tastes like liquor and peanut butter and she doesn’t mind, not at all. The knit blanket soon slides to the floor.

It’s the kind of kiss you can’t take back, Dee thinks. Sure, she’s buzzed, but still coherent. She saw it register in his eyes, too — they’re both responsible.

So to hell with it. She hopes Charlie can feel how much she wants it as she pulls him in by the back of his neck, slipping a leg between his thighs, and closes any space left between them. He answers with a faint gasp.

After a minute or so, he draws away, flushed. She’s still very much swaddled in his arms, which have migrated under her shirt and up her bare back, but he studies her with quirked brows, searching her face for something—encouragement, maybe? His chest rises and falls rapidly under her palm.

“What is it?” she asks.

“Can I say something?”

She lets her head fall and buries her nose in the crook of his neck. “Sure.”

“Is this a good idea? All things considered.”

“Hm?”

“Cause it seems like you’re about to bang me.”

Her head shoots up. “I’m about to bang _you_? You’re about to bang _me_!”

“Fine. We’re about to bang each other.”

“And? Is there a problem?”

Charlie loosens his grasp on her, his hands dropping to her forearms. His gaze drops, too. “This seems like another instance where, like past instances, things are not going to end well. So maybe we should quit while we’re ahead?”

In response, Dee throws her hands up, knocking his arms away entirely. “What the fuck, Charlie.”

“I just—”

“No, because what the fuck. What are you even trying to accomplish here?”

He looks up, eyes narrowed. “Where?”

She gestures vaguely around the room. “This! Everything! This whole day! Dinner and a movie! What the fuck is happening?”

He shrugs. “Trying to help, I guess.”

“Why? I don’t need it.”

“Dude, like, I’m sorry, but you just tried to kill yourself.”

Dee’s face scrunches up. “Cool. Yeah. Makes sense,” she says, removing herself from his lap. “So are you just gonna keep taking me on dates until I don’t want to kill myself? Is that your plan? Because I’ve got news for you: That’s gonna be a shitload of dates, thousands, even. Infinite dates, Charlie. Are you prepared for that?”

“Jesus, Dee,” he says, voice high-pitched, “I don’t have a plan! I’m just trying to be nice.”

“Well, gosh! Thanks, Charlie!” She pushes herself off the couch, wobbling a little. She has nowhere to go, though, so she paces the room. “Thanks for making out with me—so nice of you! So brave! You did great. So will you fuck off, now?”

“Now you’re just being an asshole.”

“Aw, did I hurt your feelings?” she says, spinning to face him. “You gonna go kill yourself now? Should I cook you dinner? That should solve it, right?”

The words sound sharper than she means them to be as they leave her mouth. She’s gone too far. That much is clear from Charlie’s rapid blinks as her words hit him, and the look of hurt that follows, the raised eyebrows and the mouth pressed into a hard line.

“Would it kill you to not take all your shit out on me for two seconds?” he says, rising from the couch. “All I was saying is that we should think things through. Like, banging is a big deal for me. And you’re kind of in a weird place right now.”

“I’m in a very normal place.”

“Really, Dee? Really?”

She folds her arms. “Yeah.”

“Mother of…” Charlie rubs his forehead. “If you would just stop trying to act so tough, like you’re a goddamn brick wall, maybe we could have an adult conversation.” He picks his hat off the floor, then his jacket. “I know the circumstances weren’t great, but I appreciated talking to you today, because you weren’t trying to be funny or mean or—or fucking anything.” His voice grows louder as he wrestles the jacket on. His face is bright red. “But now it’s all fucked up, so thanks. Goodbye.”

“You’re leaving?” Dee scoffs. “Fine. Jump off a bridge, I don’t care.”

“I might!” he shouts, slamming the door behind him.

“Please do!”

Dee stands there for a while, vision blurring. And now she’s crying. Fucking excellent. She reaches for the TV remote and turns the volume as high as it can go, which isn’t very high because it’s a shit TV. Judy Garland commands her to have a merry little Christmas. To that she says, “Fuck off, Judy,” and slumps onto the floor.

Whatever’s falling from the sky right now couldn’t be called snow. Not water, either. Cold, fat drops of something in between. They slap Charlie in the face as they come down, stinging a little.

He comes across some old guy walking in the opposite direction a block away from Dee’s building, a lonely looking dude with his hood pulled down over his face. They must be the only two people out tonight. Charlie’s so focused on where his feet are landing, he doesn’t notice until a few seconds later that the guy’s waving at him. He quickly retracts his hand into a pocket as they pass each other. Charlie spins around to wave back, but the guy’s already scurrying ahead.

This blows, Charlie thinks, and while he doesn’t necessarily mind getting wet, he doesn’t want to be cold—he wants to be balled up, knees to his chest, in the total darkness. He still feels swirly from the rum, like there’s a whirlpool inside his stomach, sucking him into himself. He stops under the awning of a hardware store and leans against the wall. He leans for a long time, until he’s on the ground, somehow. The seat of his jeans steeps in a bitterly cold puddle. He closes his eyes. He sits there for a while, long enough that his ass goes numb.

Goddamn Dee Reynolds, making his head crazy again. Maybe she’s just one of many things you aren’t meant to get close to, like poison dart frogs.

At some point his phone rings from one of his pockets. He rubs his eyes and assesses his surroundings, then takes quite some time rifling through each layer to locate the origin of the muffled sound. Eventually he finds his phone in the right pocket of his sweatshirt.

“Charlie,” says the voice on the other end, “You coming home tonight?”

“Hey, Frank. I think so.”

“You doing all right?”

“Oh. Me?”

“Yeah, you. Who else?”

Charlie looks up and inhales sharply. “Uh, yeah. Maybe. Do I sound all right?”

“Hm. No, you sound like you’re really tired or you’ve been crying. Or maybe you’re underwater. Is it one of those?”

“Yeah, one of ‘em.”

“Do you need me to come shoot somebody? Because I got my piece right here. Locked and loaded.”

“Thanks, buddy, but no. Please don’t.”

“All right, well. Just checking in, since Dee called to ask if you got home okay.”

“She did?” Charlie frowns, and the whirlpool grows. “Why would she do that?”

“No clue.”

He lets out a shuddered sigh. Frank says something else, but he doesn’t catch it. Then the call’s over. “Bye,” he says to no one, and climbs to his feet.

Who’s he kidding. God himself couldn’t drag Charlie away from a poison dart frog.

He finds Dee standing outside her door, messing with the lock. She’s wearing a raincoat with the hood pulled over her head and ratty slippers on her feet. When she looks up, her eyes widen at the sight of Charlie at the other end of the hall, sopping wet, striding toward her.

She holds her keys out in front of her, like she’s not sure what to do with them, her brow wrinkled in confusion. Once he gets within a few feet, she opens her mouth, but it takes her a while to get out any words. “Frank said—”

“Why did you call Frank?” he asks, his voice tight.

Her eyes are swollen and pink. “You were angry.”

“Call me, Dee. Always call me.”

Charlie takes a step closer and reaches up to push her hood back. Her face crumples up and then softens, like all the bad shit is leaving it.

In the next moment she’s all around him, or him around her. Her keys clatter as they hit the floor. He backs her against the door, and her hands struggle to find a place to settle, until they come to rest on his jaw, one tracing his ear and the other pulling him in by the chin. Her touch isn’t light but it’s careful, like she wants to make sure he’s there. He feels drunker than ever, drunk on her nearness, warm everywhere that she is, aching everywhere that she isn’t.

“You’re all wet now,” Charlie says as their mouths break apart, both panting.

She drags her thumb along the side of his face, brushing away the damp curls that stick to his skin. “I didn’t notice.”

Charlie starts to kiss her again, but she holds him back by his chest. “Wait.” She bends down to pick up her keys and sticks them in the lock. “Okay, keep going.” She jiggles the lock open with one hand and swings the other around Charlie’s neck. The door gives way a few seconds later, and they stumble into the apartment, still clutching each other, shedding their layers one by one.

“Couch?” Dee says as they come up for air. “Bed?” Charlie makes a noncommittal sound as his lips move up her cheek. They’re both attempting to wrestle off his army jacket.

“Floor? Table? Bathtub? Work with me here,” she says between kisses.

“Anywhere,” he mumbles, pressing a kiss under her jaw.

“That’s helpful, thanks.”

Dee follows Charlie as he tugs her by the waist into the bedroom. She backs him against the bed, and he sinks onto the edge of the mattress but doesn’t let her get far away. The tangled ends of her blonde hair brush his cheeks as she looks down at him. She bites her bottom lip, eyes a little shiny. She almost looks nervous.

“You’re pretty, Dee,” he breathes.

She glances away with a small laugh. “You just noticed?”

He reaches tentatively for her cheek, guiding her eyes back onto his. “No,” he says, very seriously.

She stares at him hard, like she’s doing calculations in her head. Then she kisses him deep and hard. Charlie falls back on the bed, blood pounding in his ears. She straddles his hips and hooks her fingers around the waist of his jeans. His cock twitches under her weight.

“Here,” she says. She tugs his sweater past his shoulders and over his head. He flinches at the cool air on his skin; then there are her palms on his bare chest, warm and overwhelming, like they’re charged with electricity. He helps her out of her own shirt, heart caught in his throat. He’s not prepared for how much it’s still new, still scary, even the second time.

“Wait,” he says, breathless, as she stares down at him, her hair pushed sloppily behind her ears. He pushes himself upright, so his nose is a few inches from Dee’s. “Can we go slow?”

Her eyes flicker back and forth as she watches him. She nods. “I can suck you off,” she offers, and begins unbuttoning his jeans. He grabs her wrist before she can unzip them, and she looks up, confused. He guides her hand down to his bulge.

Dee catches on quickly and runs her fingers down the seam in his jeans and takes him into her palm. Charlie lets out a soft, low moan as she applies more pressure. His cock strains in place, leaking in his boxers.

He flails a little as he reaches for her, and she responds by edging forward, sliding into place above his bulge. She bucks her hips, brushing gently against him at first, and then again, grinding hard. Charlie’s breathing picks up, almost whimpering.

As he squirms below her, Dee watches him with piercing interest, the corners of her mouth quirking up as he tries his best to maintain eye contact. It’s hard, though—she’s so close, so real, and she’s riding him like she’s trying to tame a wild animal, though each time she shifts above him he feels himself grow wilder, stomach squeezing, feverish. He can’t help his eyes falling shut, but each time they do, he fights to see her again. None of his foggy late-night fantasies could have prepared him for this: the thereness of her. He aches in his jeans.

Still perched on his bulge, she moves her hands to the waistband of her sweatpants. “Is it okay if I—"

“Yeah,” he chokes out.

She dismounts him and he helps her untie the drawstring. The pants drop, and she kicks them to the side. She’s wearing plain white briefs, dark with wetness down the middle.

“I wasn’t really expecting company, so—”

Charlie pulls her in by her thighs and runs his tongue along the damp stain, feeling for her slit through the thin fabric. She shudders in response.

“Fuck, Charlie—you’re insane,” she says, breathy, threading her fingers through his hair. Her eyes flutter shut as his tongue finds her entrance. “In a good way,” she adds.

He laps at her until her thighs start trembling, and she sinks back onto his lap, welcoming the pressure with a short, strained gasp. It’s a nice sound—he notices it even in the haziness of the current moment and wants to hold onto it somehow, record it like a tape and keep it snug in his memory for later. Then she thrusts herself down on him, and his mind goes blank.

Their noses brush as they rock against each other, open mouths meeting briefly, but Charlie’s too wrecked to kiss her fully. He leans his sweat-soaked forehead against hers. Each time she moves down his cock, away from him, he squeezes her waist tighter, like she might not come back the next time. But she does, every time.

Dee is quieter than he remembers, more frantic and grabby. Maybe it’s because they’ve wasted so much time. Maybe because she’s trying to commit the whole thing to memory, like he is. She's flushed bright pink, and she glows around the edges, at least in his own vision. Like a goddamn angel. He realizes then that he wants to see her like this, just like this, as much as possible. For forever, even.

Her composure is long gone now, and Charlie’s working himself into her just as desperately as she’s grinding onto him. Her eyes are unfocused, like she’s someplace else. Charlie feels like he’s there too as they take in each other’s ragged exhales.

“Dee,” he says, chest heaving, “You feel really good.”

“Yeah? Y—” Her voice breaks into a moan as he drags his thumbs up her inner thighs. “You feel—”

“Good?”

She’s slowing down, her underwear soaked through. “Yeah. Really good.” Her breath hitches as he digs his fingers into her thighs. “Fuck. Do that again.”

He obeys, gripping her harder, and ruts against her entrance. “Dee,” he says into the crook of her neck. “Dee, I’m gonna—"

He lets out an uneven groan, burying his nose in her hair, as the tightness stretching from the soles of his feet to his stomach snaps like a rubber band. He’s left panting, glazed with sweat, with a mess in his jeans.

Dee rides out her orgasm on his thigh, and Charlie thinks he hears her mumble his name a few times as she rolls her hips to the end. She collapses on his shoulder once it’s over. Her cheek is warm against his bare skin. He drags his fingers along her back, which rises and falls shakily under his hand.

“You just made me come in my pants, Dee,” he says, grinning.

“Is that so?”

“We should hang out more.”

Dee snorts and flops over on the mattress beside him, breathing hard. He falls on his back, too, so their heads are aligned. When he looks over at her, there’s a small smile on her face.

“You seriously have to burn those jeans, though.”

“No way. I’ll just re-boil them.”

She rolls onto her stomach and stares at him. Her eyes are bright, probably from the orgasm, but there’s something else there, too, though Charlie doesn’t have a word for it. “Suit yourself,” she says. She leans in, pauses for a moment like she’s about to change her mind, and then places a kiss on his cheek anyway.

Last night’s sleet has turned the ground by the railroad tracks into a long stretch of grayish mud. Mac and Dennis stand with their feet coated in the mud, both intensely hungover, and do not look at each other, keeping about a yard’s distance between them. It’s been about fifteen minutes of this so far.

“Where the hell are they?” Mac asks for the third time this morning.

“If I knew, don’t you think I would tell you?”

“I don’t know, man. I don’t get your mind games.”

Dennis folds him arms. “Well, I _would_ tell you. If only so that you would stop asking.” His head pounds. He wants so badly to sit, or to be anywhere else.

They fall silent, squinting at the overcast sky.

“You don’t remember last night, right?”

Dennis stiffens. “Nope.”

“Yeah, me neither.”

“I never do,” he mutters. “Yet you always ask.”

He finds a rock lodged in the mud near his feet and gives it a firm kick. It’s heavier than expected. He inhales sharply, hopping a little, as the pain radiates up his right leg. “This day sucks. It always sucks.”

Mac walks over to inspect the damage. “You know you have fragile feet, bro. You can’t just go around—"

“I know. Okay? I know. Stop hovering.”

Mac takes a step back.

“Are you mad?”

Dennis is quiet for a moment. “Sure, I’m mad. It’s a low-boil thing, though.” He pauses. “Not your fault.”

“Cool. Because it feels like you’re taking it out on me.”

“Well, I can’t control where it goes.” Quieter, he says, “Sorry you’re in the crossfire or whatever.”

He can feel Mac’s eyes on him. “It’s Dee, right?” Mac asks.

Dennis folds his arms. “It’s any number of things.” Mac’s still watching him. “But yeah. It’s Dee.” In a louder voice, he says, “Where the fuck is she, by the way? Just because her life is in shambles doesn’t mean she gets to skip out on our holiday traditions.”

He’s suddenly aware of a growing rumble, the sound of an oncoming train. “Fuck!” he shouts, soon drowned out by the train chugging past. “They’re fucking missing it!”

Mere moments after the train disappears from sight, Dee’s voice comes up from behind them.

“Hey, dickwads.”

She and Charlie emerge from behind a disused boxcar, looking generally disheveled.

“We bring good tidings,” Charlie shouts.

Mac waves excitedly at them; Dennis frowns. “Where have you been?!” he asks as they approach.

They shrug, smiling at each other. Dennis hates when they get like this—all conspiratorial, like they know something he doesn’t. That’s _his_ thing.

Today, though, the hatred sort of diffuses, leaving him flat like a popped balloon, as he looks at his twin sister. With a vague twinge in his stomach, he notices she’s dressed in different clothes since he last saw her. Granted, she’s still wearing sweatpants, but they seem to be a fresh pair.

“And tidings? What tidings?”

“You know, like. Tidings,” Charlie says, and glances at Dee. On his cue, she pulls a rock out of the pocket of her jacket and, grinning, hands it to Dennis. It’s a big one.

“I don’t think that means what you—” Dennis stops himself. “Whatever. I don’t care. Let’s throw some shit.”


End file.
